This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, will be the launch of Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey by Marlene Schäfers, published by the University of Chicago Press.
In its attention to the voice as form, this book examines not only what voices say but also how they do so, focusing on Kurdish contexts where oral genres have a long, rich legacy.
In Turkey, recent decades have seen Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and political value as metaphors of representation and resistance. Women’s voices, in particular, are understood as a means to withstand patriarchal restrictions and political oppression. By tracing the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their voices as a result of these shifts, Schäfers illustrates how contemporary politics foster not only new hopes and desires but also create novel vulnerabilities as they valorize, elicit, and discipline voice in the name of empowerment and liberation.
To purchase the paperback for $21 use the discount code UCPNEW at press.uchicago.edu.
Meet the speakers
Marlene Schäfers is Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Schäfers' research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, the politics of death and the afterlife, and the intersections of affect and politics. She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey (University of Chicago Press, 2022), investigates Kurdish women’s struggle for voice in contemporary Turkey. Her second research project focuses on the politics of afterlives in the Middle East. Through an ethnographic investigation into how the dead acquire powerful afterlives as martyrs, saints, and heroes, the project conceptualizes afterlives as a central site for the exercise, nourishment, and sustenance of sovereignty.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. He is Co-Convenor of the Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, as well as Co-Editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.
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